Zombie Cannon Carnage

Popularized through Flash games, cannon projectile games have been done time and time again, generally with little change from one to the next. At least this one is a little different. Zombie Cannon Carnage is a game that lets you send a zombie superhero soaring through a city, and explode their corpse when they fail to go any further.

If you have ever played a cannon projectile game before, Zombie Cannon Carnage will feel fairly familiar. However, it does bring to the table a nice variety of new elements that must be mastered to succeed. First is the thruster, which allows you to send your zombie flying forward.

Dyn-o-mite!

When pressing this button you can move the zombie up and down by tilting the device. This is great for reaching obstacles for more points and avoiding flying above the city, which results in getting hit by a plane and ending your round.

After your zombie has racked up enough damage, you can end their run by exploding them. This leaves behind a red ball, which can be steered into obstacles for extra points. If you gain enough damage in this mode, you can create another explosion and send the zombie remains flying further. This continues until you no longer have enough momentum to keep the damage counter up.

Each game initially lasts for three rounds. After each one, you can spend your hard-earned pocket change to upgrade your thruster, cannon, and damage shields to keep you intact longer. There is also a random mystery item, which can be an extra round, chainsaw, air strike, dynamite box, and more.

The big drawback to the gameplay is that there is only one available city. There is a good amount of variety within it, but the lack of randomization means that each round can play like the last. This brings the total replay value down a bit, and we hope more content is added in a future update.

Launching zombies is ok, because they’re already dead.

Once you reach a certain number of points, you’ll unlock another zombie for a grand total of three. The major difference between each zombie is the way they change the graphical style of the city. For example, Rot Bot makes the city into a futuristic neon environment, while Z-Emo brings her gothic, pink-tinted style with her.

The load screen graphics are done in a witty comic-book style, with speech bubbles playing off the real-world stereotypes of each zombie with an undead twist. Depending on what score you get, the game will either praise you or insult you, saying that you need to read the tutorial or stop being a n00b. We intentionally failed a few times just to read these awesome insults.

Zombie Cannon Carnage, like most other Freeverse-published games, has Plus+ integration. However, we were particularly impressed with the insane amount of leaderboards available. Each type of obstacle (including humans, exploding crates, and chainsaws), your total amount of damage overall, and more are tracked and posted online against other players. There is some slowdown when you get an achievement, but this is fairly minor.

If you have enjoyed shooting things out of cannons in the past, Zombie Cannon Carnage is a title that you should check out. Putting an end to the heroes among zombies isn’t just satisfying, it’s better than eating brains.

When thinking up the concept for their forthcoming game, the folks at H.grenade followed the lead of the creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and mashed together four unrelated words. The result is the game’s title: Zombie Superheroes from Outer Space! (exclamation point theirs). If that name just blew your mind, stuff it back into your head before the zombies devour it, and let’s dissect what this game is about.

We recently had a chance to chat via e-mail with Shay Casey, the creative director and game designer at H.grenade. In his words, Zombie Superheroes from Outer Space! is “a casual game that requires no dexterity to enjoy… it’s built from the ground up to be quick, easy, violent, and funny.”

If the title isn’t self explanatory, the game tells the tale of three zombie superheroes who’ve crash landed on our planet and want very much to go home. Since zombies prefer eating brains to using them, the best idea they can come up with is to construct a cannon to shoot themselves out of our atmosphere.

As the game begins, our undead heroes are ready to blast off. You’ll choose to play as one of three zombies, but the only one whose name the developers could divulge was Pee-Pee Boy. There are three basic components to the gameplay, says Casey, but they merge seamlessly with one another. First, you fire your zombie from the cannon, then you use a grappling hook to swing through the city, and finally you crash as spectacularly as possible.

A touch and drag slingshot-like motion lets you determine the cannon shot’s trajectory and power. Let go, and you’re launched into the air. Because of the zombies’ poor engineering skills, the shot doesn’t have a hope of blasting them home, so you end up in the city.

Luckily, the zombies are equipped with grappling hooks, and you can swing from building to building like a decaying Spider-Man. Tap to hook a building and tap again to release. Along the way, you’ll want to grab power-ups and avoid obstacles like air conditioners, balconies, police officers, and the occasional military F15 Strike Eagle missile. The city is never-ending, so you can keep grappling as long as your skills allow. Then you’ll want to find something expensive to crash into, and hurl yourself toward it.

After crashing, your zombie goes ragdoll-limp but keeps soaring through the air. You can then use accelerometer controls to add Burnout 3-like “aftertouch” physics, which guide what’s left of your lifeless corpse into whatever looks fun to destroy.

The game tracks your distance and the amount of damage you’ve caused in separate point tallies. Since you’re a zombie, you can lose the occasional limb and keep going, although nicking an obstacle will slow your progress. Your head is the tracking point, so wherever it ends up is where your distance is graded. The more destruction you or your limbs cause, the higher your damage score. These totals can be posted to online leaderboards.

It’s possible, Casey says, that a Lite version will be released before the full game, so you’ll be able to get a taste of what’s to come before you plunk down your hard-earned cash. Look for Zombie Superheroes from Outer Space! on the App Store soon.

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